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Kicking off the 2015 season with Targa NZ Rally Sprint

5 March, 2015

The 2015 Metalman Targa NZ Rally Sprint is fast approaching, taking place on Sunday, March 8 at Ardmore Airport. The season-opening, one-day sprint event in the South Auckland/Franklin area is now a key part of the Targa calendar, and provides a good warm up for May’s three-day Targa Bambina, held in the Coromandel and Bay of Plenty. The Targa Bambina is the second of the Targa calendar’s three events, the third of which is the six-day Targa New Zealand — this year running from Auckland to the lower North Island, in late October.

The opening Targa NZ Rally Sprint is a popular part of the Targa schedule, not only because it’s a great warm up for Targa regulars, but also provides the ideal opportunity for interested racers to try the Targa experience for themselves, and see what it’s all about.

“The roads are typical Targa roads, nice and twisty and not too fast or slow, and competitors have the option of competing against the clock to see who is the quickest, or using it as either a test-and-tuning day to dial in their cars and driver/co-driver combinations,” says Peter Martin, Targa NZ event director. For spectators, good viewing opportunities of the cars can be found at the event’s home base of Ardmore Airport, or off Creightons Road, Ardmore. The road closures on Monument Road and Ardmore Quarry Road take place from 9.30am with roads remaining closed until the end of the event at 3pm.
 

Motorsport Flashback: The Temple of Speed

28 August, 2026

On the banks of the Lambro River is Europe’s largest enclosed park, all 688 hectares of it. Parco di Monza was commissioned by the son of an Austrian empress as a summer retreat in the late 1700s, but it would be for another century and a half before ground was broken on what would become Italy’s famous theatre of speed at the park’s northern end. One hundred years ago on 3 September, less than four months after work started, Autodromo Nazionale di Monza was officially opened and the first race – appropriately, the Italian Grand Prix – was run a week later. Monza was the world’s third purpose-built circuit, after Brooklands and Indianapolis, and was the result of the Milan Automobile Club financing the 3500 workers who created the super-quick, and consequently dangerous, track that made the word ‘Monza’ synonymous for speed.

Bronze treasure unearthed

20 August, 2026

The car was put away in favour of something more practical, and when his father was unable to drive any more, Matt’s friend asked him to come and take a look at his dad’s old Holden. It turned out this was one of those phone calls that leads to that feeling of pure joy in the classic car world — the ‘barn find’ that turns out to be even better than expected. The HT Monaro had been put to bed some years before and had not seen the light of day since. Layers of dust and boxes of junk littered her undercarriage and bodywork and access points all around.